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Legislative intrusion into the womb has a long history in the United States, and nowhere is this paternalism more forceful than when illegal drugs are part of the equation. If the country’s war on drugs functions as a system of social control, that control is doubly exercised when a fetus is involved.
Today, with some notable exceptions, the nation is reacting to the opioid epidemic by humanizing people with addictions — depicting them not as hopeless junkies, but as people battling substance use disorders — while describing the crisis as a public health emergency. That depth of sympathy for a group of people who are overwhelmingly white was nowhere to be seen during the 1980s and 90s, when a cheap, smokable form of cocaine known as crack was ravaging black communities across the country.
News organizations shoulder much of the blame for the moral panic that cast mothers with crack addictions as irretrievably depraved and the worst enemies of their children. The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and others further demonized black women "addicts" by wrongly reporting that they were giving birth to a generation of neurologically damaged children who were less than fully human and who would bankrupt the schools and social service agencies once they came of age.
The myth of the "crack baby" — crafted from equal parts bad science and racist stereotypes — was debunked by the turn of the 2000s. But by then, the discredited notion that cocaine was uniquely and permanently damaging to the unborn had been written into social policies and the legal code. By the time the epidemic was over, the view that the fetus was a person with rights superseding the mother’s had gained considerable traction in practice.
You might want to do some reading again, neonatal abstinence syndrome does not happen in "crack babies." And what do you mean by my point? The editorial merely gives caution to creating police based on media sensationalism and poor scientific rigor. Much like Reefer Madness of the 1930s and prohibition in the 1920s, propagandizing drugs and alcohol leads to bad policies and the creation of other social problems (e.g., the rise organized crime).Not sure what your point is. Maternal drug and alcohol abuse during pregnancy can actually harm their unborn baby, and "crack babies" aka "Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome" really is a thing.
You might want to do some reading again, neonatal abstinence syndrome does not happen in "crack babies." And what do you mean by my point? The editorial merely gives caution to creating police based on media sensationalism and poor scientific rigor. Much like Reefer Madness of the 1930s and prohibition in the 1920s, propagandizing drugs and alcohol leads to bad policies and the creation of other social problems (e.g., the rise organized crime).
During the 80's and 90's, the nation's health specialists panicked over the growing number of so-called "crack babies" — children exposed to crack cocaine in utero. These children were said to be doomed to lives of physical and mental disability. But, 20 years later, many of the children who were perceived to be "at-risk" are proving the predictions wrong as young adults. Host Michel Martin speaks to Mary Barr, an activist who is vocal about her own drug abuse during pregnancy, and Nisa Beceriklisoy, her daughter. Also joining the conversation is Dr. Carl Bell, a clinical professor of psychiatry and public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
When the use of crack cocaine became a nationwide epidemic in the 1980s and ’90s, there were widespread fears that prenatal exposure to the drug would produce a generation of severely damaged children. Newspapers carried headlines like "Cocaine: A Vicious Assault on a Child," "Crack's Toll Among Babies: A Joyless View" and "Studies: Future Bleak for Crack Babies."
But now researchers are systematically following children who were exposed to cocaine before birth, and their findings suggest that the encouraging stories of Ms. H.'s daughters are anything but unusual. So far, these scientists say, the long-term effects of such exposure on children’s brain development and behavior appear relatively small.
During the crack epidemic of the 1980s and '90s, healthcare workers feared that children born to addicted mothers had little hope for a healthy future. But a newly released study suggests that initial concerns about so-called crack babies may have been misplaced, and that the biggest issue that could hurt these kids was not drug exposure, but poverty.
Smoking crack while pregnant is harmful, VERY HARMFUL, to the fetus.
Indeed it is. See, for example:
Fetal Cocaine Exposure: Neurologic Effects and Sensory-Motor Delays
Developmental and behavioral consequences of prenatal cocaine exposure: a review
Developmental Consequences of Fetal Exposure to Drugs: What We Know and What We Still Must Learn
What are the effects of maternal cocaine use?
As with other forms of damage to the unborn child, a good home environment can do a great deal to ameliorate these problems. However, that is often difficult to achieve for the children of drug addicts.
[N]umerous studies have employed the Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (BNBAS) to assess the neurobehavioral sequelae in the first month of life. Findings have been widely divergent and sometimes contradictory. Several studies have reported depressed interactive behavior, impaired responses to environmental stimuli, and deficits in orientation, and in motor and state regulation in cocaine exposed cohorts. Other well designed studies, however, found no significant deficits on the BNBAS.
Over the past two decades, cocaine use during pregnancy has received focused attention, with initial reports suggesting the potential for teratogenic effects of prenatal exposure on the developing fetus. However, many of these reports generated exaggerated and eventually unsubstantiated concerns regarding a hypothesized ‘crack baby syndrome’. As a result, several large prospective studies were initiated to assess the short-and/or long-term outcomes of children with prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE), many of which continue to investigate potential biological and environmental vulnerabilities in exposed populations from birth into adolescence and young adulthood.
Dire predictions of reduced intelligence and social skills in babies born to mothers who used crack cocaine while pregnant during the 1980s—so-called "crack babies"—were grossly exaggerated. However, the fact that most of these children do not show serious overt deficits should not be overinterpreted to indicate that there is no cause for concern.
Next time you post some articles, take some time to actually read them.
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